Where dragons, rogues, myths, storytellers, archetypes, and misplaced modifiers come to play

The Ho33it?

Hello World!

Without any ado, this is my new blog about anything fantasy related. Myth, Fantasy and sci-fi classic texts, book reviews, movie reviews, gaming, various conjurations of the mind, literary stuff, and some writing-related matters– blogging can be a journey that takes you there and back again…

So while the news is fresh (ish), let’s talk about Peter Jackson’s pair of upcoming Hobbit films Hobbit trilogy.

Despite the fact that The Hobbit is less than 1/4 the size (by page count) of the Lord of the Rings (300 to 1300), it will receive the same number of films (3). So where does the material come from? According to Jackson:

We recognized that the richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, gave rise to a simple question: do we tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as filmmakers and fans was an unreserved ‘yes.’

As a LoTR fan, I simply love the idea of more, more, more! But as a fan of things being done artfully and gracefully, I can’t help but wonder if Jackson is going to lose all but the most devoted fans by stretching this story beyond its natural size.

Now, as someone who seeks to make a living off my creative endeavors, I certainly understand the impulse. The three LoTR films made piles of money, and the Hobbit ones should be no different. And I bear no malice against those who make piles of money creating something meaningful, beautiful, and entertaining (yes, I placed a lot of conditions on that). But is this a story that *needs* to be told? I’ve always felt that in the greatest stories, there’s an urgency that if the story isn’t told, and told properly, the storyteller would simply explode, or else wither up and die.

Any thoughts? Does more Hobbit make you merrier? Or is PJ going to milk the franchise into embarrassment?